


Don’t Look

by calangkoh



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Diamond Days arc, Honestly this fic is born of an intense childhood fear i had, classic discussion: what if stevens gem was removed, gratuitous angst sorry, i could not sleep until i wrote this scene down so im sorry, implied gore but nothing graphic, no happy ending, probably not canon compliant but i guess we’ll never know, thanks reddit for giving me wonderfully awful ideas, the one where i accidentally predict the new episode, written before battle of heart and mind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 04:21:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17379455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calangkoh/pseuds/calangkoh
Summary: maybe it’s a good thing we’ll never know what happens if steven’s gem is removed.EDIT after the episode: PSYCHE!





	Don’t Look

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was inspired by a conversation with my bf on what would happen if steven’s gem was removed, as well as countless reddit threads that decided to answer the question in the most heartbreaking and/or goriest of ways. a specific post is what gave me this plot bunny: https://www.reddit.com/r/stevenuniverse/comments/3gdgcy/dark_scene_i_wrote_down_because_otherwise_it/

The hand moved too fast for either to react. It didn’t help that the light emitting from White Diamond’s form was blinding. 

Connie stepped forward, though she wasn’t sure what she planned to do. She had no sword, no powers, and no means whatsoever to fight.

White grabbed Steven from right next to her, and when Connie dared to lunge after him, she smacked against an invisible wall White put around her. Connie banged her fists, rammed her shoulders, and used just about every bit of force she could muster in that moment. 

As she watched Steven squirm in White Diamond’s grip, which was clearly too tight if Steven’s gritted teeth and furrowed eyebrows was anything to go by, her next and only other idea was to take the Crystal Gems out of her jacket pocket and hope they’d reform.

She shook the stones and yelled, but nothing happened. Even Amethyst hadn’t reformed yet, and she would never take this long. Something was wrong with the gems and she hoped to the stars that it wasn’t permanent and that by some miracle they’d overcome whatever was preventing them from reforming.

When she looked back to Steven, White Diamond had pulled off his shirt and discarded it to the floor a hundred feet below. White Pearl took it away, so the red wouldn’t clash with the strictly white color scheme. 

White Diamond adjusted her fingers so that Steven’s gem was visible to her. Feeling the exposure but unable to see past the giant fingers made Steven’s throat tighten with fear. 

What is she doing? he thought, but in his heart he already knew. 

With her other hand, she placed two fingernails around Steven’s gemstone, found a grip, and began to pull.

Steven screamed. Connie screamed. White Diamond’s smile did not falter (not that it ever did, anyway). 

White branching lines patterned like a circuit board appeared on Steven’s body, growing and getting brighter the longer White Diamond pulled. Every cell in his body was being stretched apart, but they wouldn’t break. His gem wouldn’t allow them to break. 

White Diamond gave up after what seemed like an eternity for both Steven and Connie. Even the strength of the most powerful diamond couldn’t separate the gem from his human body. Perhaps Pink was onto something in creating a hybrid. 

Nevertheless, White still wanted Pink back. 

Steven gasped, drenched in sweat and tears still falling. He was placed back on the ledge beside Connie while White Diamond stared off into the distance, communicating with her pearl.

Glued to the walls of the cage, Connie watched Steven sit up and cried out in relief. He glanced over at her, remembering where they had left off before White Diamond exposed him to the most painful feeling in his life. He mirrored Connie and pressed himself up against the glass.

“Are you okay?!” Connie breathed.

Instinctively, Steven nodded, but in the pit of his stomach something churned. 

As if on cue, White Pearl’s bubble clipped through the floor and retracted to reveal the aforementioned along with what appeared to be a peridot, a much lighter shade than the Peridot of the Crystal Gems, and hair in the shape of a circle. 

She saluted White with her limb enhancers and awaited her orders. She was nervous. Of course she was. No gem ever had the privilege of being face to face with White Diamond.

“I have a very important task for you, Peridot. I need you to remove the gemstone from this human.”

Steven and Connie both flinched, even though they already figured that was the goal. 

“Steven, run,” Connie whispered. 

Of course he wasn’t going to leave her, but he did start thinking of a way out for both of them.

Unfortunately, they gave him no time to think. Peridot started to approach with an array of tools that make really bad surgical equipment but would definitely do the trick. He put up his bubble. 

“Oh, none of that, Starlight,” White said.

She raised a hand again and popped the bubble with a slight touch of her fingernail. 

Steven summoned the biggest shield he could, and White just yanked it from his hands and flung it across the room where it disintegrated upon hitting a wall. 

Standing his ground wasn’t going to work. He started to run, though he had no idea where. White grew more frustrated. Her fist dominated Steven’s vision, and he found himself being crushed like an ant. 

Connie screamed, muffled either by White’s fist still on top of him or by the intensity of his own pain. 

Of course, Steven was durable as a half gem. It hurt, but it left nothing more than some bad bruising in various parts of his body. 

Connie was sobbing, and that motivated Steven to try and stand back up when the weight had lifted. 

White had had enough. Steven felt something push him to his back, and then he was unable to move. Like Connie, he was contained by an invisible force. 

“Continue, Peridot,” White Diamond commanded.

Peridot appeared as a silhouette over him, the blinding light behind her dulling her features. The one thing he could make out clearly was the glowing, neon saw-like tool from her limb enhancer.

Steven tried to prop his head up at least to look, but even his head was confined to the surface that had risen to form a table preferable to Peridot’s working height. 

“Don’t do this!” Steven screamed. “You don’t know what will happen!”

White Diamond responded, “Pink Diamond will reform, or nothing will happen.”

“What if nothing happens?! You’d risk that?”

“Better to risk having nothing than to risk not having Pink.”

Stammering and still screaming his words out of desperation, Steven grasped at any straw he could find, “Even if Pink does reform, she’ll never forgive you! She won’t ever be the Pink Diamond you want her to be!” 

“She will, with time.” 

Peridot had paused in confusion at the conversation. At least Steven was stalling. 

“She’ll overthrow you before that happens!” Unlikely, but still worth the argument. 

“You overestimate her power. She couldn’t do such a thing on her own, and only the weak and purposeless are ignorant enough to play her games and join another rebellion.”

Steven opened his mouth to try another argument, but White raised a finger to her mouth to hush him, and the gesture was sudden enough to silence Steven out of confusion, at least.

“Starlight, you’re not the only one with mind powers. I know this is what you’ve always wanted.” 

Steven gawked at that. 

“What?!” He burst, anger bubbling in the place of his fear. “Why would I want this?!”

White Diamond chuckled, “You’ve always wished you could give everyone your ‘mother’ back.”

It was rather unclear if she actually understood the term. The fact that she used it at all suggested she really had peeked into his mind. 

Steven’s anger settled as quickly as it erupted, and a feeling he couldn’t quite identify took its place. 

“I—“

“You’ve always wanted to give everyone the Pink Diamond, the ‘Rose Quartz,’ they deserved. They deserve better than you.”

Connie banged on the glass.

“Don’t listen to that! That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!” 

Steven felt his eyes water, but he blinked it back. 

“I don’t…” he breathed. “I don’t feel that way anymore!” 

He did feel that way, but he definitely didn’t feel it now, when he was about to get his wish. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want his twisted fantasy of trading himself for his mom to come true. 

“But you do,” White Diamond sung. She looked at Peridot. “Continue, or I’ll send for someone who actually has the capacity to take simple orders.” 

Peridot audibly gulped and readied her tool.

Steven tried to struggle again, tears falling freely. The saw was an inch above his stomach, and he could feel an electric heat radiating from it. He yelled protests and he tried to summon his bubble.

Connie was slamming against her cage, screaming, crying, breaking her knuckles in her useless punches. Steven turned his head and made eye contact with her and both of them stopped their struggling, though on Connie’s end it was from anticipation of what Steven was about to say to her. 

He was going to die. He didn’t want to die, but he was going to. He suddenly felt eerily peaceful about the fact. But Connie was going to live, and that was the thing he was concerned with in his moment of accepting his fate.

“Connie,” it would be the last time he said her name. “Don’t look.”

Connie’s eyes widened, and when the saw pierced Steven’s skin and blood dripped, she involuntarily turned away and put her hands to her ears in a futile attempt to block the screams. 

—

The gem didn’t want to let go of his body. Even as it was cut out all around, it took an impossible amount of force to disconnect it, the light forming half of his body holding on desperately to its source.

Once it was finally gone after all that effort getting it out, all Steven felt was cold, but not physical cold. It was a cold that couldn’t be placated. 

He didn’t have to look to know it was gone. With that cold, the unbearable emptiness and feeling of a vital missing piece, he didn’t see any reason to live.

Not that it mattered. He didn’t have a choice. His body was shutting down, the light drained from his form and leaving rapidly dying cells. 

The last thing he heard was White Diamond’s muffled voice.

“Organic life is so disgusting.” 

The casual statement at his own dying body almost made him want to laugh, if he could. 

Seconds later, his body distingegrated.

Turns out he could poof.

**Author's Note:**

> i was gonna post an epilogue but if i were a reader id like the freedom to come up with my own potentially sorta happy ending to keep my sanity so im gonna leave it
> 
> edit: so i realized after answering a comment that this fic was me projecting an intense childhood fear i had of being stabbed in the chest/stomach and dying slowly as a result (i had a very vivid and morbid imagination when i was 8 lmao) so thats why i decided pulling out the gem wasnt enough and i had to take the surgical route for no other reason besides projecting my biggest anxiety as a kid


End file.
